This clean, effortlessly cool sneaker is something like a classic Chuck Taylor or Stan Smith.
Artist Broc Blegen doesn’t exactly remember this, but according to his parents, his first word was “ball.” What he does remember is the moment when, as an adult, he discovered his grandfather’s old baseball cleats from the 1950s, which were hanging in the back of a closet. Sadly, his grandfather wasn’t able to speak well after suffering from a stroke years earlier, but as Blegen recalls, “He saw how excited I was and gestured to me, like, ‘You should have these.
Blegen, who grew up playing basketball and baseball in Minnetonka, Minnesota, like his grandpa, took the shoes and decided to give them a new life. Today, Blegen is launching a line of baseball cleat–inspired sneakers called. The men’s and women’s shoes are available in black, tan, and white and are made from vegetable-tanned leather in a family-run factory in Lewiston, Maine.
“I don’t have any training in fashion,” Blegen admits. “I literally took my grandpa’s cleats to a shoe repair shop in Queens that also made prototypes, and I asked them to essentially just copy the upper design but add a sneaker bottom where the cleats would normally be.” The end result is a clean, effortlessly cool sneaker that Blegen equates to something like a classic Chuck Taylor or Stan Smith.
“When I first had the idea to design sneakers inspired by America’s pastime, I thought that they ought to be made in America, too.” Blegen may not come from a fashion background, but his deep love and knowledge of baseball coupled with his previous art practice has turned him into a bona fide accessories entrepreneur. “As an artist, I’d been focused on building an art collection of fakes,” he explains.
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